new things for us

Charity. Before we went on vacation, we signed up to donate $15/month to GreenPeace. It's not much but it is not wise to give more when we are still digging ourselves out of debt. At the end of the tax year, we'll get $5 for every $15 we donate and GreenPeace still gets $15! It's a win-win situation for both parties.

I still haven't made up my mind on 2 things, which I'm hoping you could help:

1. Whether to save up to $5k first before putting extra monies to debt, and
2. What to appropriately title this blog

Oh yes, I have the biggest problems in the world. :)

Personal time. I have partially decided to take a group fitness class near our home. All the food that I gorged in during the holiday season--in addition to the complaints and blunt comments from my family (and extended ones!) about my weight--made me realize that I have not given my body what it rightfully deserves. This (partial) decision is not accounted for in the 2010 budget. The costs might prevent me from pursuing this, so we'll see what happens I guess.

Giving. J and I talked about giving our seldom-used iMac to my parents. They have this 3-yr old HP laptop that I find so clunky. It has all the technology that they don't need! Who needs touch screen, or a revolving screen, or cool apps? Not my parents obviously. I had been thinking of selling the iMac anyway, but I'm not too sure how much it would go for and I'm not willing to undersell it either. $500 just isn't enough for me. It just sits on the desktop 90% of the time, unplugged, gathering dust. I thought my folks would be happy to switch to Mac and never need to worry about cables between the CPU and the screen, plugging in the camera, etc. They actually used it when they were in NZ and found it simple to use. Nothing new about this, but that just means I get to buy myself a Macbook if/when I choose to. :)

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I will talk to J about allotting time after work to individually do something for his/herself. I'm sure he'll agree with me that it's a great idea. I will also bring up the idea of allotting Friday as our family walk day.

I'm excited!